More thoughts on the retail calendar

Since I started talking about my crusade against the retail calendar (see www.letterwritingcrank.blogspot.com ) a few people have offered possible reasons for the trend-

Many schools in other parts of the country start sooner than they do in the Northeast(where I live). Well, then I would suggest that the stores tailor their mailings geographically. And I bet those kids that do go back to school earlier don't need a month to buy loose leaf paper and pencils.
A woman in my knitting group said that she has to mail her christmas presents around the country so she usually tries to get her shopping done before thanksgiving. She said that the ads are probably geared to people like her. But I have noticed stores putting things out as early as september. Unless your stuff is going to Kashmir I don't know anyone who needs to be done this early. Also, not everyone celebrates christmas, imagine if there were dreidls and menorahs plastered everywhere for months before you saw a christmas tree.

As I have thought about this quite a bit over the past few weeks I think that I have two chief objections:the first is that it gets people to spend more money on crap they don't need(and may not be able to afford) and two it makes us all hyperaware of the passage of time. I'm trying to retrain myself to savor the moment that I'm in rather than constantly looking ahead and then complaining about how fast time flies.

The letter writing crank

If you are interested in reading my ongoing dialogue with retail stores and some of their policies check out my other blog- the letter writing crank.

It's OK...

...to throw pictures of your children in the garbage. My husband doesn't agree with me but seriously, how many pictures of them sleeping do you really need?

Conundrum

So, I noticed last week that a number of stores and catalogs have been sending out "back to school" fliers and inviting me to celebrate the end of summer with them...in the middle of July!! Kids just finished school three weeks ago. Retailers are pushing the calendar so far back that I'm surprised they aren't trying to get us to do our Christmas shopping a year in advance.

The worst offender and the leader of the pack is CVS. ON Jan. 2nd they are ready for Valentine's day, on FEb. 15th they bring out the shamrocks, I think they are waging a secret campaign to eradicate thanksgiving because they can't figure out a way to make money off of it.

I complain about this annually,usually in october, but the back to school crap in the middle of July really stuck in my craw so this year I decided to go a little bit further and start complaining to the companies themselves. I don't think I'm making any headway but I'll save that for another post.

Here is my quandry-I needed a top and I scored some amazing buys at an end of season sale. Is it wrong for me to take advantage of the very thing that I have been railing against for the past week? Am I just encouraging them?

Welcome!

Well, you know blogging is totally over if I, major technophobe now have one.

I felt the time had come to share my crackpot ideas in a more organized manner than randomly spewing then out, tourette's like, to whomever is around when I have them.

My original idea for the egghead brainiac club was a group dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, just the sheer pleasure of broadening one's own intellectual base. However, as my husband accurately predicted , the only person I could ever interest in such a group was my dad.

So a blog is born!